I slammed the gavel onto the sound block three times. After dozen or so meetings during the club’s inception which had gotten out of hand, the block had been screwed to the table at the end where my seat was positioned.

“I’m calling this meeting to order. Mr. Secretary, have you got anything noteworthy?” I asked.

Fancy flipped through his notepad and traced his finger along the page. “In the last meeting, Kelp made a motion to allow the trade of the old Sporty abandoned years ago in the back lot to the hardware store for Christmas trees, and provide the Christmas trees to the Toys for Tots kids at the ride this fall. It was left that we were unsure as to the value, and whether or not we had legal right to the little Sporty. I checked with the Treasurer, and we had already filed the paperwork for the mechanic’s lien against the Sporty, and it is legally ours to sell or trade. We have the title in the safe. The Treasurer further informed me the value of the bike is roughly $2,200.00. I have my doubts it’ll be worth that much, but $2,200.00 was his response.”

“Second thing, I can’t read my fuckin’ meeting minutes, and my memory is shit, so who stood opposed to making the Fayetteville ride mandatory?”

Jeb raised his hand. “I did.”

“Gotcha. Just needed to make note of it. Hell, I couldn’t read my own writing. That’s all I got,” Fancy said.

“Treasurer, where do we stand?” I asked.

“About the same as last time, Slice. $7,402.20 in the club checking, $5,405.00 in the club savings, and $112,500.00 give or take in the safe. We have nothing due out at this point in time,” Mike responded.

“Give or take? What the fuck does that mean? How much is in the fucking safe, Mike?” I asked.

“Close as I can tell Slice, we got a hundred and twelve grand. It’s all banded in $1,000.00 bundles. Then there’s five hundred loose. So, $112,500.00. But I didn’t take time to count all the money in the bands, but there’s a hundred and twelve of ‘em,” Mike said.

I nodded my head. “Good enough.”

During Church, when I spoke, everyone was attentive. Not once could I recall being interrupted or disrespected in any manner. Our meetings were conducted in as professional of a manner as a Motorcycle Club could expect, and how I was personally treated in the meetings was second to none. I had my doubts, however, as to my being able to maintain order while the particular subject up for discussion was being brought to light. I decided to talk fast and pause for comments or remarks after I was finished speaking.

“Alright, listen up fellas. We got us a little situation. I know I don’t normally get involved in matters like this, but for this one, I’m going to. I had a meeting with Frank, and he’s got a little deal that needs taken care of. I ain’t lookin’ to go into a bunch of detail on this, because the whole thing makes me sick, but here we go.” I paused and stood from my seat. “There’s a child molester in town and he’s been making little kids suck his cock; little grade school kids. He made videos of this shit. Cops raided his place on a fucked up search warrant. Bottom line? He’s free and they can’t charge him. They got all the proof, but they can’t use it in court. Frank’s asked us to take care of this guy. I need probably three volunteers. So, it’ll be me and three others. Who will it be?”

I hesitated and reached for the rubber band without thinking.

Snap!

The entire room erupted. Every swingin’ dick in the meeting was screaming and hollering me, me, me. I shook my head and reached toward the table. Before I got the hammer in my hand, Otis screamed.

“Order, God damn it,” he hollered.

The room fell close to silent.

“Order!” Otis screamed.

Silence.

I turned to face Otis and shook my head. “Jesus. I need to get a bike repossessed and I can’t get one motherfucker to volunteer. Got us a ChoMo to kill and every cocksucker here raises his hand and screams like a fucking kindergartner. Now fuck, there are thirty-two of you fuckers. I need four total, and one of them is gonna be me. Now how we gonna decide this?”

“I think we ought to draw straws, Slice. Cut twenty-seven of them the same, and five shorties. The shorties win,” Tater responded.

I raised my hands in the air in frustration. “Well?”

“I make a motion we draw straws,” Tater growled.

“Second,” someone screamed.

“Who seconded it?” Fancy asked.

“Toad,” Toad screamed from the back of the room.

“All in favor?”

“Aye,” echoed from around the room.

“Opposed?”

Silence.

I pressed my hands into my hips and raised my eyebrows. “Only problem I see is this. We ain’t got any fucking straws.”

Following a reasonable amount of groaning and grumbling, Fancy spoke. “I can cut up a few sheets of paper.”

“Well, get to cuttin’ it,” I said.

After a few minutes of dicking around, Fancy produced a hat with wads of paper in it. I looked at him and shook my head in disbelief. As I accepted the hat, I raised it to shoulder height and inhaled a slow breath.

“Listen up. Everyone take one of Fancy’s wads of fucking paper from the hat. The three short,” I said.

I paused and turned to face Fancy. He nodded his head. I turned to face the fellas. “The three short pieces get to go. Everyone else, I appreciate your willingness, but this is how we’re doing it,” I explained.

As soon as Fancy passed the hat around the room, everyone began to compare paper strips. It would stand to reason Fancy would have made the short lengths of paper significantly shorter than the rest, but he didn’t. Leave it up to the Secretary to cut a half inch off of an eleven-inch strip of paper. After ten minutes of comparison, Otis, Tater, and Toad were the winners. I couldn’t have picked a better crew if I had selected them myself.

“Alright, Otis, Toad, and Tater are the winners of this fiasco. You three stay after Church, and we’ll discuss details. Now, rides. Saturday’s ride is mandatory just in case any of you forgot. We’ll meet here at seven in the morning, and head out to Wichita at eight. First bike out is at nine. That’ll give us plenty of time. After the ride, maybe we’ll hit a few bars. Any new business need discussed?”

Otis looked around the room, and turned to face me. “I got one thing, Slice.”

“Well, let’s hear it,” I grumbled.

Otis widened his eyes and began to speak. “Pete’s Ol’ Lady came in here the other day, and was turned away. He didn’t say anything to me, but I’ve heard some shit talking floating around about how I treated her when I escorted her off the lot. Seems Pete ain’t lookin’ to take it up with me, so maybe a refresher of the bylaws are in order. What do ya think?”

After placing emphasis on Pete’s Ol’ Lady, Otis’ voice quieted to a normal gravely tone. It was apparent he wanted to call Pete out in front of the fellas, but it wasn’t necessary for him to do so. It was my job.

I scanned the room and crossed my arms in front of my chest as I made eye contact with Pete. Forty years old and an ex-con, Pete looked the part of a white supremacist. Tall and muscular, his head was clean shaven and littered with tattoos. Although his head was shaved, he had twelve inches of beard that hung from his chin, making him appear to be more at home on the yard in prison than in the free world. As our eyes locked, I clenched my jaw and flexed my biceps. “God damn, fellas. We’ve got the bylaws posted up here on the wall for a fucking reason. I know there ain’t one of you motherfuckers able to remember them all, so I posted ‘em up here for you to make reference to. Now Pete, you see the bylaws up on the wall?”

“Yep,” he grunted.

“See the part at the very bottom of the board on the right marked Ol’ Ladies?” I asked as I turned around to face the bylaws.

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

“Read it to me if you will,” I said.

“All of it, Slice?” he grumbled.

“All of it,” I nodded as I turned to face him.

My position on Ol’ Ladies wasn’t shared by the rest of the club. I believed if the club wanted members to have Ol’ Ladies, they’d have one sewn onto the front of their cut when they became patched in. In my opinion, Ol’ Ladies were a pain in the ass and a risk to the welfare of club. I hadn’t had an Ol’ Lady since high school, and the chance of that ever changing was absolutely impossible. Every problem man has on this earth begins and ends with women.

Pete stared up at the bylaws and drew a slow breath. After a momentary study of the board, he pulled against his beard and began to read.

“Ol' Ladies. One, don't fuck around with another member’s Ol' Lady. Two, Ol’ Lady Property Of patches will be voted on by all eligible members of the club. One hundred percent vote or she doesn’t wear it. Sidenote: as Property Of patches are optional, be sure before you touch some chick who isn’t wearing a patch. Three, members are responsible for their Ol' Lady. Four, members may have more than one Ol ' Lady. Five, member must state who his Ol' Lady is. Six, no, your Ol’ Lady isn’t allowed in the meetings. Seven, club business is club business. Do not discuss club business with Ol’ Ladies. Eight.” He paused and exhaled.

After inhaling a short breath, he ran his fingers though the twelve inches of scruffy beard dangling over his chest and read the last rule. “Eight, Ol' Ladies are allowed unescorted at the clubhouse only by prior arrangement by their Ol’ Man. Arrangement can only be made by placing an “X” beside your name on the board. No exceptions.”

“Damn fine job, Pete. Now, let me ask you something. You see your name on the membership board behind me?” I asked.

“Yep,” Pete grunted.

I didn’t bother to turn around and look. I knew we wouldn’t be having this conversation if he had an “X” by his name.

“Is there an “X” by your name, Pete?” I asked sarcastically.

Seeming somewhat aggravated, Pete rubbed his bald head with the palms of his hands. “No, Slice, there sure as fuck ain’t.”

“So, was Otis out of line when he escorted your Ol’ Lady off the premises?” I asked as I flexed my biceps again.

“Slice, it wasn’t that he escorted her off, it was how he did it. He took her by the arm to the gate, and when she bitched, he told her to get the fuck off the property or he’d kick her ass,” Pete complained.

I uncrossed my arms and raised my right hand to my chin. “Well, Pete. If you didn’t put a fucking “X” by your name, Otis was of the opinion you didn’t want your Ol’ Lady in here. Otis’ job is to protect the members of this here club, and protect us he damned sure does. Keepin’ some nosy assed Ol’ Lady out of this clubhouse is the Sergeant at Arm’s fucking job, and Otis is the Sergeant at Arm’s. If you don’t want her here, Otis doesn’t want her here. And, if Otis doesn’t want her here, and she won’t leave, I’d expect Otis to knock her fucking teeth out if he needed to; to protect the club and all. Now, let me have a look up on the board, and see if you want your Ol’ Lady here.”

I turned slowly toward the board behind me which listed all of the officers and full patched members. Pete’s name, as he had stated, did not have an “X” beside it in the Ol’ Lady Allowed column. I stared at the board and shrugged. “Nope, Pete. It says up on the board you don’t want her in here.”

I turned toward Otis and smiled. “Good lookin’ out, Otis. Next time she gets mouthy, if Pete hasn’t put an “X” on the board by his name, bust out a tooth or two. Maybe she’ll get the hint.”

I leaned over and placed my hands on the edge of the table. “Any old business?”

Silence.

“Otis, Tater, and Toad stick around. Other than that, meeting adjourned,” I barked as I tapped the gavel on the sound block. 

After the room cleared out, the four of us sat down at the table. The remaining members either went into the shop, hung around drinking beer in the parking lot, or rode off to who knows where. As the three members sat and stared at the walls, I interrupted the silence with the morbid truth about what we were facing.

“Alright, listen up. This fucker, from what I could gather, weighs about three-fifty. And this ain’t some random assed guess, he actually weighs three fifty. So it ain’t gonna be easy to toss this motherfucker around once he’s dead. My problem is this. Frank said he had videos of this ChoMo son-of-a-bitch making those poor kids swallow his load. Hell, he was shootin’ cum on their faces and videoing the shit.” I paused and clenched my jaw.

“That motherfucker, I can take care of this on my own, Slice. Seriously, tell me where this motherfucker is,” Otis growled.

“No, God damn it. I know you don’t like this shit any more than I do, but that’s what I’m trying to get at, Otis. This prick is a tub of shit, and we’re gonna have to move his fat ass around after he’s dead.  The point I was gonna make is this,” I said. “I want to torture this prick. I want him to know why we got him, and realize what a fucking nuisance he was before we kill his big fat ass. The only place I can think of where we can do it is where the highway south of town turns and goes up toward Wichita. You know, where Highway 77 meets K-15. There’s a river west of 77, by the railroad tracks.”

“Where we go shooting?” Otis asked.

“You got it. Now, here’s the deal. I want to make this fat piece of shit pay for what he did to these kids first then we’ll get rid of his ass. But to haul him off, we’re gonna have to cut him in pieces He’s too God damned fat to move in one chunk. And, just to be safe, we’ll need to cut the fat prick’s head and hands off. If we get rid of his head and hands, they won’t be able to prove who he is. I figure we’ll bring ‘em back to town and pour ‘em into some concrete. We’ll toss his head and hands in the Winfield Lake. That place ain’t dried up in fifty years. And if we don’t weigh ‘em down, they’ll eventually float. We can toss his body, arms, and legs to Stacey’s hogs. They’ll eat the bones and all,” I said.

Otis shrugged his shoulders. “Why cut off his head and hands? Seems like we’re takin’ risks we don’t need to take, Slice.”

I realized chopping up a person made the crime of murder a little more personal, but it was an evil necessity. Eliminating the hands and teeth left little means of identifying a body, short of DNA. With no family, DNA matching would be difficult. Dental records and fingerprints were still the only methods of identifying a body, especially in a city Winfield’s size.

“Well Otis, if we get rid of his fingerprints and teeth, they won’t be able to identify this fat fucker. As much as I want to get rid of this prick, I ain’t really lookin’ to get caught, if you know what I mean. So, we cut off his head and hands, sneak ‘em back here, and put ‘em in a five-gallon bucket. We fill the bucket with concrete, and it’ll sink to the bottom of the lake. That’ll end that.”

“Yeah, makes sense. I wasn’t following ya at first. Sounds good, Slice,” Otis said with a nod.

To me, this was something I simply needed to take care of. I had no ill feelings about ridding the earth of a child molester. It didn’t necessarily mean the other members would immediately sign on to cut a man into pieces and haul his body parts around the county to three or four respective places. Although I knew Otis wouldn’t mind, I needed to see the reaction of the other men. As I gazed across the table toward Tater and Toad, I was pleased by their reaction. 

“I got an old shitty old chain saw we can use to cut him up. We can toss it in the lake with his head and hands. And we can use my truck to haul his ass in,” Tater said.

“What color is the truck?” I asked.

“Brown, why?” Tater responded.

“Well, I wasn’t looking to try and sneak around in the dark if it was fucking white, Tater,” I said.

He chuckled. “Yeah, it’s dark brown. It’d pass for black in the dark.”

Tater had been with the club five or so years, and was a man who had spent a lifetime riding a motorcycle. As a younger man, he had done two short bits in prison for robbery and arson. Never quite conforming to what society expected of him, he had spent his life feeling like an outcast. After losing his wife to cancer at forty-five years old, he decided the only family he needed was the brotherhood of the MC. He was as devoted to the club as any man would ever be to his family, and often volunteered to do things others wouldn’t dream of.

Toad also had roughly five years with the club. The only thing that kept him from joining earlier was his commitment to the Marine Corps, and the completion of his final tour. He had been around for years as a Hang Around, and we all believed as soon as he completed his military commitments, he’d become a Prospect. Having spent almost a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was not new to killing or death. A younger man of roughly thirty years old, he was quiet and mostly kept to himself until asked to participate. Once asked, he was always committed; probably much more than most. Toad was as good of a man as would ever grace this earth. As he sat with his chin slightly resting against his clenched fist and staring at the table, I began to become slightly concerned about what his thoughts might be.

“You good, Toad?” I asked.

He slowly looked up from the table and raised his hands to the head of closely cropped Marine hair he kept maintained in a military perfect manner. “When I joined the Marines I took an oath, Slice. Against all enemies, foreign and domestic and it didn’t have an expiration date. So, killing this fat fucker?”

He stood from his chair and rubbed his hands against the thighs of his worn baggy jeans. “Little kids, Slice. The dude fucked with helpless little kids. He forced helpless seven year old’s or however old they were to suck his dick while he made movies of it. Those kids? Yeah, they’ll be fucked up for life. They didn’t have a choice; this prick intervened with their path, he fucked with their life; he altered it. They say God works in mysterious ways? I suppose it all depends on how you wanna perceive it or whatever, but check this out; God didn’t fuck with those kids, the devil did. That fat prick is Lucifer himself. God is getting ready to administer his justice. The judgment day is now.”

He pressed his index finger into the top of the table.

As he stared into my eyes, he continued, “He’ll pay for his fuckin’ sins when we show up. I got paid by Uncle Sam himself to kill Hajis. You know, I never stopped any of ‘em to ask ‘em what they believed in or if they’d actually done anything wrong. I just shot ‘em. This dude? I know what he did. So yeah, to answer your question, I’ll be fine, but I’ll say this…”

With his finger pounding into the top of the table as if he hoped to crush through it, Toad clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes. “Killing him isn’t punishment enough.”

He lifted his hand from the table and shook his head. As he began to pace back and forth, I decided to end the meeting. There was no real value in continuing to hash out details. Toad seemed to be more than ready, and I had no doubts about the other two men.

“Well, no sense in spending all night going over this. Tater, make sure the lights and turn signals work on the truck. Brake lights, running lights, everything. Make sure all the belts and hoses are in good shape, and it’s full of gas. I don’t want to break down five miles south of town with three hundred pounds of ChoMo in the bed. I figure we’ll go in the middle of the night, just bust into his place and Tase him. Then we’ll just carry his fat ass out and load him up in Tater’s truck. We’ll go over the rest of the details tomorrow. Is everyone good with doing this tomorrow night?” I asked.

The three men nodded their heads.

“I’m sayin’ it for the sake of sayin’, but you know the rules. No colors in cages, so leave your cuts at home, fellas.”

As Otis and Tater stood from their seats and walked toward Toad, I felt proud to call the three men my brothers. It wasn’t common to find men who would volunteer to do such things, but in a 1%er Motorcycle Club it was basically second nature for the men to support the club at any cost. The brotherhood of the members was much more like having a family than having an actual family. It’s always tough for an outsider to understand, but these fellas were my family, my life, and my brothers. They were all I had, and damned sure all I needed. I’d give my life to save any one of my brothers, and I know they’d do the same for me.

That’s why an Outlaw Motorcycle Club doesn’t let men walk in, sign a sheet of paper, and join. The Prospect initiation period separates the men from the boys, and requires a one hundred percent vote. If the entire club doesn’t agree the Prospect is an acceptable member, he’s turned away. My life is in the hands of my brothers, and theirs is in mine. 

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

As the three men spoke amongst themselves and filtered toward the door, I looked up at the membership board. Beside Pete’s name, a big black “X” was plastered under the Ol’ Lady Allowed slot. I smiled to myself, knowing my name would never have an “X” beside it, to do so would be to admit I was weak and incapable of surviving on my own. I damned sure didn’t nor would I ever need a woman to help me get through life. To me, being in a relationship with a woman was similar to having a rattlesnake for a pet. At first it may be entertaining and something cool to show off to your friends, but in the end you realize the danger associated with ownership. Eventually you must get rid of it, because if you play the odds, sooner or later you’ll be bit.

I flipped the light switch and pulled the door closed. Tomorrow night would be here soon enough, and I still needed to decide exactly what it was I wanted to do with this fat prick.

As I sauntered toward my bike, I chuckled at the thought of going home and watching American Psycho or a few episodes of Dexter to get ideas. I flipped the ignition on and pushed the start button and the V-Twin spun into a mellow roar. As the bike warmed up, I decided I didn’t need Cable T.V. shows or a movie to give me ideas. It was an eighty-degree spring night, a nice relaxing ride home should clear my mind.

And, as I’ve always said, if you free the mind, your ass will follow.

Worrying about the welfare of their children was the last thing I wanted a parent to be concerned about. Not under the watch of the Selected Sinners. Not where my club was present. The children are our future, and protecting them from harm was something I felt obligated to do. A parent shouldn’t have to worry about their kid being safe from harm in small town USA, hell in any town for that matter. I had all the desire I needed to help make our city a safer place for the children to play, and I intended to do so. Ridding this town of a child molester wouldn’t require a plan; it would be fueled by passion.

If I was nothing else, I was a passionate man about what it was I believed in.